traditionally it is "swang", whereas "swung" is the past participle. however there are people who use "swung" for both past tense and past participle.

a similar think goes on with "stink". traditionally there is "stank" for the past tense and "stunk" for the past participle. however many people use "stunk" for both past tense and past participle.

and likewise with "shrink". there's a movie called "honey i shrunk the kids". traditionally, that should be "honey i shrank the kids", however many people use "shrunk" for both past tense and past participle.

Unless stated otherwise, I do not care whether a statement, by itself, constitutes a persuasive political argument. I care whether it's true.---If this post has math that doesn't work for you, use TeX the World for Firefox or Chrome

I have definitely heard "swang" and probably would not bat an eye if someone said "Yesterday, Tarzan swang from vine to vine," but personally I would use "swung" and I'm pretty sure that's standard usage. But it fits the -i-, -a-, -u- pattern so nicely that it is easy to see why people would use "swang."

"It was swung" vs. "It swang" (...through the air/...in the wind/...away from danger). Compare and contrast with "It was hung" vs. "He was hanged", as a different but possibly related distinction. The former gives the responsibility of the state to another agency ("It was swung by the Champion"), the latter deals only with the direct subject's involvement in their fate ("It swang by its own momentum"). Ascribing the fate of a hanged man solely to himself, of course. Though exceptions are obvious.

Although the hung/hanged one is considered a particularly famous irregular distinction, beyond mere grammar, so I'm not sure it properly justifies my instinctual thoughts on the difference. They obviously do not adhere to the same kind of simple-past/past-participle distinction that the likes of "wrote/written" do.

("Bung"/"Bang" aren't (SFAIK) different forms of each other, though "Brung"/"Brang" (choose from: It was X forth.../It X forth...) does seem to justify the Swung/Swang agency idea, and then we must consider Sprung/Sprang.)

((Frequency of usage perhaps isn't a good guide. They are both clearly correct, in different contexts, some of which may be rendered more popular to write about, thus skewing the sampling. But also because, in overlapping contexts, (initially?) erroneous use may only self-justify the perpetuation of the error "because many people are making it", and then we get into prescriptivism/descriptivism arguments.))

Soupspoon wrote:"It was swung" vs. "It swang" (...through the air/...in the wind/...away from danger). Compare and contrast with "It was hung" vs. "He was hanged", as a different but possibly related distinction. The former gives the responsibility of the state to another agency ("It was swung by the Champion"), the latter deals only with the direct subject's involvement in their fate ("It swang by its own momentum"). Ascribing the fate of a hanged man solely to himself, of course. Though exceptions are obvious.

"It was swung" is a perfect passive construction, which in English uses the past participle. "Swung" is always the past participle of "swing." "It swang" (or "it swung" in standard use) is the simple past, which in English uses a different form for many irregular verbs. For instance, compare "he took the job" with "the job was taken."

The word "hang" is complicated in that the form "hanged" traditionally was sometimes used as the simple past of "hang," but now is almost never used except specifically for executions. The word "hung," which was always used for the past participle, is now typically also used for the simple past.

("Bung"/"Bang" aren't (SFAIK) different forms of each other, though "Brung"/"Brang" (choose from: It was X forth.../It X forth...) does seem to justify the Swung/Swang agency idea, and then we must consider Sprung/Sprang.)

I don't know what verb would have the form "bung," unless you mean that it should be the past participle for "bang," but it isn't. That's "banged," because "bang" is a regular verb. "Brung" as both the simple past and the past participle of "bring," but this is definitely nonstandard (both are normally "brought").

((Frequency of usage perhaps isn't a good guide. They are both clearly correct, in different contexts, some of which may be rendered more popular to write about, thus skewing the sampling. But also because, in overlapping contexts, (initially?) erroneous use may only self-justify the perpetuation of the error "because many people are making it", and then we get into prescriptivism/descriptivism arguments.))

The form "swung" is used one thousand times more often than "swang." This is pretty good evidence that it is the standard form.

Eebster the Great wrote:"It was swung" is a perfect passive construction, which in English uses the past participle. "Swung" is always the past participle of "swing." "It swang" (or "it swung" in standard use) is the simple past, which in English uses a different form for many irregular verbs. For instance, compare "he took the job" with "the job was taken."

Irregular verbs are generally signs of an extensive history. Common words, or historically common ones, tend to predate the current regular-rules, and perhaps demonstrate their pedigree (or mongrel) origins in linguistic history. The rest I covered.

The word "hang" is complicated...

Yup.

I don't know what verb would have the form "bung,"

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bung#Verb - for me, usage 2 is the main use (I would describe it as "to casually pass, probably by throwing or free sliding", rather than any more controlled form of handing over), usage 1 overlaps as a variant of that ("bung it in there" is to suggest a care-free putting into a recepticle, such as a loose goods bin, also more conceptual such as "bung that data it in the obvious entry-field) but also as suggested (tightly plugging a gap). Usage 4 also mostly overlaps ("bung him a tenner, will yer?"), because I find it hard to phrase an equivalent such as "have you (bribed/bunged) the mayor", outside of direct usage the noun form, but it probably happens. Usage 3 is entirely novel to me. Looks like it should have come initially from having 'banged' (sic) the target, the swelling an after-effect. (Also the 'throwing over' could well derive from the explosive force used to project it, or the clatter of an item's arrival.

The form "swung" is used one thousand times more often than "swang." This is pretty good evidence that it is the standard form.

Not really. To invent a more extreme example, imagine a specific word for "to re-enter the atmosphere", with distinct and official first-person and third-person forms. People are allowed to use either, and a non-re-enterer can even describe themselves fictionally re-entering, but an overwhelming amount of usages are likely of the impersonal variation, as reportage of another (in fact or fiction), rather than the personal one (by the few fictional 1st-person accounts and the fewer returning astronauts stating facts).

If, in a less extreme example, swinging as a description tends to be ascribed mostly to actively swung items (nerf swords?) desrving of the participle rather than simple term for descriptive passivity (hanging baskets), a bias might exist. We could also talk about "swinged" ("ng" pronunciation, not the "nj" one from "swinge", the latter fairly commonly used in the form "swinging cuts") as an obvious regularish formation and yet even more non-standard form than "swang" might be considered to be by some...

I've literally never heard "swang", and it's certainly nonstandard in my locale. It's definitely not for lack of opportunity, because although things are probably more often swung than swing of their own volition, constructions like "swung wildly out of control" (of a vehicle, active voice) are common. It's certainly possible that the set was at one time the same as drink-drank-drunk, sing-sang-sung and that the simple past was absorbed into the participle, and further that the same pattern is sometimes applied to the verb in a logical but nonstandard way now. I mean, it seems plausible enough that "swang" could develop as an accepted usage, particularly a spoken one, in a pocket here or there and leave no trace in the corpus.

But yes, it is an ordinary verb used in all its principle parts, not part of some fixed phrase (shrift and smithereens and things) or any really special semantic role that forces it into a particular form, so a 1:1000 ratio is extremely significant.

If it's part of your idiolect, own it; take pride in your uniqueness.

Edit: I'd honestly also never encountered (that I recall) the apparently archaic verb "swinge", but I'm glad to see that the unambiguous "swingeing" is also accepted, because that would be terribly annoying otherwise.

So much depends upon a red wheel barrow (>= XXII) but it is not going to be installed.

The form "swung" is used one thousand times more often than "swang." This is pretty good evidence that it is the standard form.

Not really. To invent a more extreme example, imagine a specific word for "to re-enter the atmosphere", with distinct and official first-person and third-person forms.

I can imagine such a word, but it's kind of pointless to do so given that English doesn't work that way. (As in, there aren't verbs other than "be" and "has" that have such distinct first and third-person forms.)

Also, I think you seriously underestimate the frequency with which the first-person form would show up in science fiction, for example, while you seriously overestimate how much 0.1% is.

(For reference, the ratio of "he swung" to "he swang" in the Google Books corpus is roughly the same as the ratio of "definitely" to "definately".)

Edit: Also, your pretend example with vastly different first- and third-person forms wouldn't apply to a search that includes a subject pronoun, which I did to eliminate passive and perfect constructions that would use the past participle.

Unless stated otherwise, I do not care whether a statement, by itself, constitutes a persuasive political argument. I care whether it's true.---If this post has math that doesn't work for you, use TeX the World for Firefox or Chrome

Unless stated otherwise, I do not care whether a statement, by itself, constitutes a persuasive political argument. I care whether it's true.---If this post has math that doesn't work for you, use TeX the World for Firefox or Chrome

We swang around some personal opinions and had a bit of a traditional prescriptivist/descriptivist battle with frequencies of use, sure, but it was hardly concluded either way, and the more the merrier, right..?

Soupspoon wrote:"It was swung" vs. "It swang" (...through the air/...in the wind/...away from danger). Compare and contrast with "It was hung" vs. "He was hanged", as a different but possibly related distinction. The former gives the responsibility of the state to another agency ("It was swung by the Champion"), the latter deals only with the direct subject's involvement in their fate ("It swang by its own momentum"). Ascribing the fate of a hanged man solely to himself, of course. Though exceptions are obvious.

I'm pretty sure the distinction hang/hung distinction is in what action is occurring, not in agency or transitiveness. For examples:

The outlaw hanged.The park attendant hung the child from the ride.

gmalivuk wrote:(For reference, the ratio of "he swung" to "he swang" in the Google Books corpus is roughly the same as the ratio of "definitely" to "definately".)

I here you're ideas and their definately good.

The thing about recursion problems is that they tend to contain other recursion problems.

eSOANEM wrote:Yeah, the conventional distinction with hanged/hung is that the execution method uses "hanged" but everything else uses "hung".

Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage provides many examples of writers ignoring this distinction and concludes that if you follow this rule "you will spare yourself the annoyance of being corrected for having done something that is not wrong."

About swing: the OED Online says that the Old English past tense was swang singular, swungon plural. It seems to have changed to swung in both numbers in the Middle English period.

It's a pretty silly usage anyway, since English doesn't really use different forms of the same word for different meanings (in the same grammatical form). At least it doesn't very often. "Winningest" has a different meaning from "most winning" in North American sports jargon I guess. But yeah, when someone literally hung from a noose and died, it would be ridiculous to complain when someone says so. But some people will complain about anything if it makes them feel better.

It's interesting that many people look to dictionaries to provide definitively "right" and "wrong" usages and pronunciations when dictionaries are descriptive by definition and typically point out this fact in the front matter.

Copper Bezel wrote:It seems similar to me to "mouses" being sometimes accepted for the computer input device but never for the animal.

Things like that bother me quite a bit for some reason - inventing a distinction that has no etymological basis. Others that come to mind are "insure" and "ensure" having different meanings, "daemon" being pronounced differently as a computer term, and "farther" and "further" having different meanings

Copper Bezel wrote:It seems similar to me to "mouses" being sometimes accepted for the computer input device but never for the animal.

Things like that bother me quite a bit for some reason - inventing a distinction that has no etymological basis. Others that come to mind are "insure" and "ensure" having different meanings, "daemon" being pronounced differently as a computer term, and "farther" and "further" having different meanings

According to Wiktionary, the movement from "assure" to "insure" for that meaning dates back to 1635, and it wasn't exactly an invented distinction. The farther/further distinction dates at least to the early 18th century and again was based on a gradual drift in actual usage, not some small pompous group choosing to make up new rules (as was the case, for instance, with coining terms like "a murder of crows"). It's a totally natural evolution of language.

Copper Bezel wrote:It seems similar to me to "mouses" being sometimes accepted for the computer input device but never for the animal.

Things like that bother me quite a bit for some reason - inventing a distinction that has no etymological basis. Others that come to mind are "insure" and "ensure" having different meanings, "daemon" being pronounced differently as a computer term, and "farther" and "further" having different meanings

According to Wiktionary, the movement from "assure" to "insure" for that meaning dates back to 1635, and it wasn't exactly an invented distinction. The farther/further distinction dates at least to the early 18th century and again was based on a gradual drift in actual usage, not some small pompous group choosing to make up new rules (as was the case, for instance, with coining terms like "a murder of crows"). It's a totally natural evolution of language.

Well, yes, "insure" has been used in the specific financial sense since the early 1600s. But the OED has quotes that use "ensure" in the same sense from well into the 18th century. Moreover, and more importantly, "insure" has also continued in use in the more general sense. The insistence, then, that someone saying "I want to insure that this gets done in time" is using the wrong word is an arbitrary prescription.

For "further" and "farther", I think there's a slightly better case for prescriptivism, since "farther" seems always to have been preferred when used as the comparative of "far". Still, general trends notwithstanding, both words have always been used in both senses; also, as the OED notes, "there is a large intermediate class of instances in which the choice between the two forms is arbitrary".

So in adverbial use further dominates when there is no sense of distance and as a sentence adverb, but both farther and further are in flourishing use whenever spatial, temporal, or metaphorical distance is involved.